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Topic: Light pollution and breast cancer

skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 14 January 2006 08:14 AM

(This could have gone under News or Body and Soul as well - in our current confusion, I didn't know where to put it, so I just leapt. Please move if necessary.)

From the front page of today's Globe and Mail comes this promising report.

This could be a great breakthrough. Light pollution will not, of course, be the only or even a main cause of cancer, but our interrupted and/or unnatural sleep patterns may be blocking the beneficial effects of melatonin on cancer cells in our bodies, and since researchers believe everyone develops at least some of those anyway, disrupting the production of melatonin looks like a very bad thing - but a bad thing that perhaps we can correct.

The further and further I read into the article, the more and more solid I thought this study looked. So: good news. And time to buy some elegant sleep-masks, yes?

From: gone | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

fern hill
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3582

posted 15 January 2006 10:51 AM

I read this article yesterday and while it seems promising and solid as skdadl says, I had an inkling of some controversy around melatonin.

I googled 'melatonin' and got more than 2 million hits, among them this article from Scientific American from 1996.
It cautions about the wild claims being made for melatonin.

But wasn't there something quasi-political or race-related? I've gotta start making notes about things that interest me -- clearly my brain is not up to it anymore.

From: away | Registered: Jan 2003 | IP: Logged

skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 15 January 2006 10:57 AM

Well, melatonin is not melanin, yes/no? I think of melanin as having to do with skin colour - does melatonin as well?

My melanin clumps; therefore, I have freckles.

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fern hill
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 3582

posted 15 January 2006 11:47 AM

Paging scientists/biologists/medicos. Holy moly, I am confused. Melanin is not melatonin, but they are not unconnected. Sorry, that's the best I can do after googling melatonin+melanin.

I got 'supplement' sites, I got racist sites, I got universities, I got confused.

[ 15 January 2006: Message edited by: fern hill ]

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skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 15 January 2006 11:52 AM

I can well imagine. And you remind me, fern hill, that we should always resist overenthusiasm about these reports that come along in the pop media - God knows, I've warned about that often enough m'self.

I mean, I confess: the fact that the Grope put this story on its front page, its Saturday front page, alongside a huge - if pretty meaningless (at least to me) photo of ... lights? - all on its own made an impression on me, but how silly is that? The display shouldn't have influenced me to trust the report more, and yet it did.

It would be good to have a biologist or other scientist come along and evaluate this for us.

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skdadl
rabble-rouser
Babbler # 478

posted 15 January 2006 11:54 AM

PS: One difference between this report and the report from Scientific American you linked to, fern hill, is that the latter was talking about the fad in melatonin supplements, whereas these new guys seem just to be discussing the body's own production of melatonin.

From: gone | Registered: May 2001 | IP: Logged

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